Pakistan’s civil, military leaders to review Iran standoff

• Pakistan to take broad security review
• Both sides have signaled desire to de-escalate tensions

Pakistan’s top civilian and military leaders will carry out a security review today on the standoff with Iran, the information minister said, after the neighbours carried out drone and missile strikes on militant bases in each other’s territory.

Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar will chair a meeting of the National Security Committee, with all the military services chiefs in attendance, the minister, Murtaza Solangi, told Reuters by telephone.

It aims at a “broad national security review in the aftermath of the Iran-Pakistan incidents”, Solangi said. Kakar cut short a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos and flew home on Thursday.

The tit-for-tat strikes by the two countries are the highest-profile cross-border intrusions in recent years and have raised alarm about wider instability in the Middle East since the Israel invasion started in Gaza on October 7.

However, both sides have already signaled a desire to cool tensions, although they have had a history of rocky relations.

Iran said Thursday’s strikes killed nine people in a border village on its territory, including four children. Pakistan said the Iranian attack on Tuesday killed two children.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the two nations to exercise maximum restraint. The US also urged restraint although President Joe Biden said the clashes showed that Iran is not well liked in the region.

Islamabad said it hit bases of the separatist Baloch Liberation Front and Baloch Liberation Army, while Tehran said its drones and missiles targeted militants from the Jaish al Adl (JAA) group.

The targeted militant groups operate in an area that includes Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan and Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Both are restive, mineral-rich and largely underdeveloped.

The groups which Islamabad targeted inside Iran have been waging an armed insurgency for decades against the Pakistani state, including attacks against Chinese citizens and investments in Balochistan.

The JAA, which Iran targeted, is also an ethnic militant group, but with Sunni Islamist leanings that primarily Shi’ite Iran sees as a threat. The group, which has had links to Islamic State, has carried out attacks in Iran against its powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, Iran and its allies have been flexing their muscles in the region.

This week Iran also launched strikes on Syria against what it said were Islamic State sites, and Iraq, where it said it had struck an Israeli espionage centre.

The Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen has targeted shipping in the Red Sea since November, saying it is acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

Inside Pakistan, civilian leaders came together to throw their support behind the military despite a deeply divided political arena in the buildup to national elections next month.

Former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a candidate for his party for prime minister, and the party of three-time premier Nawaz Sharif, considered an electoral frontrunner in the polls, said Pakistan had the right to defend itself but called for dialogue with Iran moving ahead.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan also condemned Iran, but called the strikes on Pakistan a failure of the caretaker government brought in to oversee the elections.

The PTI “seeks an immediate explanation from the unconstitutional, illegal, unrepresentative and unelected government for its complete failure to safeguard the integrity, security and defence of Pakistan,” it said in a statement.